Liberal Studies has been established as a mandatory senior secondary school curriculum in Hong Kong since 2009. As one of university-entrance required subjects that aims at developing students informed understanding and decision-making, Liberal Studies requires teachers to adopt critical thinking training and multiple perspectives in teaching and learning. Since then, Liberal Studies teachers and their students inquire into controversial issues about Hong Kong, modern China and globalization. This innovative and inquiry school curriculum, however, has been criticized as one of the culprits of making Hong Kong’s youths active participants in unconventional civic participation. In recent years, the pressures from the pro-establishment camp of the legislature have argued for either changing it from mandatory to elective curriculum, lessening the examination requirements, or relegating it from graded to non-graded assessment status. All these, if carried out, will possibly make Liberal Studies exist in name only, not to mention already causing uncertainties and bewilderment among teachers and students. This paper shall review the development and debates surrounding this innovative and inquiry curriculum. It will possibly shed some lights on how an invisible climate of authoritarianism can exert impacts on a school curriculum. Copyright © 2020 Charles University.

Researchers in comparative education have suggested different ways in which their field of study can be enhanced by considering units of analysis at different levels rather than focusing on a single level such as the nation-state (Bray and Thomas, 1995; Torney-Purta and Barber, 2011). The study reported here seeks to contribute to this area of interest to comparative researchers. It does so by identifying groups for comparison that are not predefined in advance of any analysis but which emerge during the analytic process itself. Drawing on data from ICCS 2009 (Schulz et al., 2010), the intentions of 14-year-old students in five Asian societies to participate in future civic related activities are analyzed with a focus on the students’ responses to specific questions. The results show that there is considerable variation within each of these societies when it comes to type of future civic engagement. At one end of the spectrum are groups of students who are classified as “Radical Participators” while at the other there are the “Minimal Participators” and there are other clusters of students in between. Groups such as these exist in each society, although not in the same proportions. The implications of these results are discussed, especially with reference to how comparative research can be enhanced by identifying groups through person-centered analytic techniques.
[Copyright © 2015 The Author(s).]